Land Clearing Services
Clear your lot for construction, farming, or landscaping — competitive bids from pros.
$1,500 – $15,000+
depending on acreage, density, and material disposal
1–5 days
average for residential properties
Post once. Local tree pros are notified the moment your job goes live and bid directly — no per-lead fees.
What Land Clearing includes
- Tree felling and sectioning
- Brush and understory clearing
- Stump grinding or extraction
- Debris hauling or chipping on-site
- Rough grading (optional)
When you need it
- Building a home, barn, or structure
- Creating pasture or farmland
- Developing a driveway or parking area
- Wildfire defensible space creation
- Lot preparation for resale
What to expect
- Contractors assess density and access before quoting
- Disposal method (haul vs. chip) affects price significantly
- Permits may be required for large-scale clearing — confirm with your local authority before mobilising
- Equipment access and soil conditions affect feasibility
How GivingStump works
- 1
Post your job
Describe what you need — free, takes 2 minutes
- 2
Get competing bids
Local certified arborists send proposals with pricing
- 3
Hire the best fit
Compare bids, reviews, and credentials — then choose
Why GivingStump
- Verified before you can hire
- Real reviews from real homeowners
- $0 homeowner fees — contractors pay only on wins
What land clearing actually involves
Land clearing is a materials-handling problem wearing a tree-work costume. Cutting the vegetation down is rarely the expensive part; deciding what happens to every ton of it, and how deep you need the ground to be clear, is where the money goes.
1.Establish the boundary before anything moves
Find the property pins, and know where easements, setbacks and any protected buffer along a stream or wetland sit. Clearing across a boundary or into a buffer is expensive to undo and can involve replanting obligations. Rules on this vary a great deal by jurisdiction, so confirm what applies to your parcel with your local authority before equipment is booked — not after.
2.Choosing the method, which is choosing the price
Broadly there are three approaches. Fell-and-chip takes the trees down and processes the brush through a chipper. Forestry mulching runs a machine over standing material and grinds it into a mulch layer where it stands — no haulage, but stumps and root mat stay. Push-and-pile with a dozer or excavator clears fast and leaves you with piles to deal with. They produce different ground and cost different money.
3.Selective clearing and the trees you keep
Keeping specimen trees changes the machinery and slows everything down, and it has a consequence people rarely expect: a tree that grew in a stand has never carried wind on its own. Left standing alone after its neighbours are gone, it is far more likely to fail in the first big storm. If you are keeping trees, mark them, tell the crew, and get an arborist to say which ones can actually survive exposure.
4.The material problem
Every acre produces a volume of wood and brush that has to go somewhere: chipped and spread, mulched in place, piled and burned where that is permitted, ground for mulch, or hauled off. Burning rules and burn permits vary by jurisdiction and by season — check locally rather than assuming. Disposal is frequently the largest single variable in the whole quote.
5.Stumps, root mat and what "clear" means
Clearing to mowable is a different specification from clearing to buildable. Mowable means stumps ground below the mower line. Buildable means stumps and root mass grubbed out and the resulting voids backfilled and compacted properly, because organic material left under a slab or a driveway rots and the surface settles. Say which you need; the words "clear the lot" cover both.
6.Soil, water and what you are left with
Bare soil moves. Expect the crew to plan for sediment control, and expect ruts wherever tracked machines worked wet ground. Getting cover established — seed, straw, or a temporary crop — soon after clearing is usually cheaper than fixing erosion later.
What drives the price of land clearing
Per-acre figures are the least reliable numbers in tree work, because an acre of scattered saplings and an acre of mature timber on a slope have almost nothing in common. What contractors actually price is stem density, stem size, terrain and disposal.
- Density and stem size, not just acreage
- A hundred small saplings and a dozen mature trees can occupy the same ground and represent completely different jobs. Density drives machine hours; large-diameter stems drive handling and disposal.
- What you need the ground to be afterwards
- Mowable, plantable, and buildable are three specifications with three prices. Grubbing stumps and compacting the voids is a large step up from grinding them below the mower line.
- Disposal route
- Mulching in place has no haul cost and leaves organic material on site. Hauling means trucks, trips, weight and tipping fees. Burning, where permitted, is cheap but heavily rule-bound. This is usually the biggest single lever in the number.
- Terrain, slope and ground conditions
- Slope limits which machines can work safely and slows everything that can. Wet or soft ground can stop a job entirely, and rock changes what is possible with an excavator.
- Getting the equipment there at all
- Heavy plant arrives on a lowboy trailer, which needs a road, a turnaround and an entrance it can get through. A parcel with no usable entrance needs one built first.
- Buried and hidden obstacles
- Old foundations, wells, septic systems, farm dumps, fencing wire and buried utilities all sit on cleared land and all cost time when they are found mid-job. Locate what you can before bidding.
- Selective versus full clearing
- Working around trees you are keeping is slower and needs more careful machine work than clearing everything, so a selective clear can cost more per acre than a full one.
Before you book
- Locate your property pins and have a survey to hand if you have one; if you do not, get the boundary settled before clearing.
- Confirm with your local authority what applies to your parcel — clearing thresholds, buffers along water, burn permits and erosion control all vary by jurisdiction.
- Flag every tree you want kept with tape, and walk them with the contractor rather than describing them.
- Mark wells, septic tanks and fields, buried lines, and any old structure or foundation you know about.
- Have buried utilities located before any grubbing or digging is scheduled.
- Decide what the ground has to be afterwards: mowable, plantable or buildable. Put that word in the job post.
- Decide where equipment gets delivered and whether a lowboy can reach it.
- Photograph the parcel before work starts — useful for the contractor, for permits, and for your own record.
On the day
- This is heavy equipment on a multi-day schedule, not a morning visit. Expect delivery and collection days at each end.
- Dust, noise and vibration are substantial, and neighbours notice. Tell them in advance.
- Tracked machines rut wet ground. Some of that is repairable at the end; some is a reason to wait for drier conditions.
- Walk the boundary with the operator on day one, physically, rather than pointing from a distance.
- Check the piles and the ground condition daily rather than at the end — redirecting a clearing job is far cheaper on day one than on day four.
Is land clearing the right call?
Land clearing is the right answer when
You are dealing with an area rather than a list of trees: a building pad, a paddock, a driveway line, defensible space around a house, or a lot being prepared for sale.
Individual tree removal is the right answer when
You can count the trees on one hand and they are around a house rather than across a parcel. A residential crew with a chipper is cheaper and far less disruptive than mobilising plant.
Forestry mulching is worth asking about when
The goal is to knock back brush and small stems over a wide area and you do not need the stumps out. It is fast and there is nothing to haul away, at the cost of leaving root mat and a mulch layer behind.
Talk to an arborist first when
You are keeping specific trees, or the parcel has mature trees whose survival after exposure is in question. That is a short consultation that can save a tree, or save you the cost of removing a failed one later.
Compare with tree removal and stump grinding.
Land Clearing FAQ
How much does land clearing cost per acre?
Lightly wooded land runs $500–$2,000 per acre; heavily wooded land can reach $5,000+ per acre. Get multiple bids on GivingStump — pricing varies widely based on local equipment and disposal costs. Treat per-acre figures with suspicion generally: density, stem size, slope and where the material goes matter far more than the acreage number.
Do I need a permit to clear land?
Very often, and the rules vary a great deal — by state, by county, by municipality, and by what is on the parcel. Thresholds by acreage, buffers along streams and wetlands, slope and erosion-control requirements, and separate burn permits are all common, and none of them are national. Confirm with your local authority before anything is mobilised. A contractor who works in your area will usually know the process, but the permit obligation normally sits with the property owner.
What happens to the cleared material?
Options include chipping and spreading on-site as mulch, mulching it in place with a forestry machine, hauling to a disposal facility, or burning where allowed and permitted. Your contractor will quote each option so you can choose what fits your budget. Ask for them as separate lines — disposal is often the largest variable in the whole job.
What is the difference between clearing and grubbing?
Clearing removes what is above ground: trees, brush and debris. Grubbing removes what is below it: stumps, root mass and the root mat. You can clear without grubbing — that gets you a mowable field — but anything you intend to build on needs grubbing, because organic material left under a slab or a driveway decomposes and the surface settles unevenly.
Can I keep some of the trees?
Yes, and it is worth planning rather than deciding on the day. Mark keepers with tape and walk them with the crew. Be aware that trees which grew inside a stand have never taken wind alone; once their neighbours are gone they are far more exposed and some will fail. An arborist can tell you which candidates have the root plate and taper to stand on their own.
Will clearing cause erosion?
Bare soil moves, especially on slopes and especially before anything is growing in it. Sediment control during the work and getting cover established quickly afterwards — seed, straw, or a temporary crop — is the standard answer, and in many places some form of erosion control is a permit condition. Ask what your contractor plans to do about it and confirm local requirements with your authority.
Do I need a survey before clearing?
If you are not certain where the boundary runs, yes. Clearing over a line is one of the few tree-work mistakes that cannot be undone, and it can involve replacement costs assessed on the value of the trees rather than the cost of the clearing. Find the pins, or get them found, before a machine arrives.
What time of year is best for clearing?
Firm, dry or frozen ground carries heavy equipment with far less rutting and damage, and leafless deciduous growth is easier to work through and produces less material to handle. Wet-season clearing is possible but slower, messier and harder on the soil. If the schedule is flexible, ground condition is the thing to optimise for.
Related services
Ready to get land clearing quotes?
Post your job free and get competing bids from local arborists. No per-lead fees.
Get Free Land Clearing BidsFree to post · No commitment · $0 homeowner fees